🏡 Italian: My Home and Rooms

Ciao! Today we are visiting an Italian house. The Italian for house is la casa. First we will look at the rooms, then at the things inside.

The rooms of the house: la camera da letto (bedroom), il bagno (bathroom), il soggiorno (living room) and la cucina (kitchen).

In English every noun just says “the”. In Italian every noun is either masculine (blue, il) or feminine (red, la). Mostly, words ending in -o are masculine and words ending in -a are feminine.

Masculine nouns have three words for “the”: most take il, those starting with s + consonant take lo, and those starting with a vowel take l’. Feminine nouns take la (l’ before a vowel). English does something similar: a book, but an apple.

In the plural the article changes: il → i, la → le, lo and l’ → gli. The noun changes too: -o → -i, -a → -e. il letto → i letti, la sedia → le sedie, l’armadio → gli armadi.

We say that something is there with c’è, which means “there is”. After it comes un (il), una (la) or uno (lo), meaning “a”: C’è un letto.

For more than one we say ci sono, “there are”, then a number and a plural noun: Ci sono due sedie. Ci sono tre lampade.

Dov’è il gatto? Where is the cat? The cat is on the table: Il gatto è sul tavolo. su = on, and su + il = sul.

sotto = under, in = in. Il gatto è sotto il tavolo. È nella scatola. Careful: in + la = nella.

Let’s remember: il / lo / l’ / la and in the plural i / gli / le. We say what there is with c’è and ci sono, and where it is with sul / sotto / nella. Now try it in La Mia Casa!